Space Crunch: Renters More Likely to Feel the Squeeze

When you’re looking for a new home, what’s the first decision you make?

In all likelihood, it’s the number of bedrooms you’ll need. However, it’s becoming less commonplace for the number of rooms to match the number of residents–a statistic that Trulia mined from the U.S. Census 2014 5-year American Community Survey data.

It wasn’t that long ago that bedroom-sharing was a common practice, especially in families with children and/or elders. But as homes began to expand, sharing became much less common. In 2009, 14.2 percent of households had more family members than bedrooms. Today, that figure has grown to 14.7 percent.

That’s not the only startling number from the report. According to the collected data, 26.4 percent of renters are experiencing a space crunch–significantly more than the 8.1 percent of households who own.

Unsurprisingly to SoCal residents, Los Angeles is the city most affected by space crunch, with a whopping 41.8 percent of renters experiencing it. (LA homeowners are better off, but still higher than the national average at 15.9 percent.) Additionally, of the top five most “crunched” cities, only one–NYC (#2)–isn’t in California. NYC is followed by Anaheim (#3), Riverside (#4), and San Francisco (#5). Again: not a big shock to West Coasters.